Daniel Johns made zero (0) friends today

It’s the Seymour Centre? Already? Really? Didn’t that both fly by and crawl painfully? Idol Contestant Hopefuls about to have their dreams crushed out of them like so many fingers caught in a garlic press, bound gaily into Australian Idol Sponsored Mazda’s and marvel at the many sights Sydney has to offer. I marvel at the rather significant amount of them who appear to not be wearing their seatbelts as they gad about town. Then I tut. Then I realise that I just channeled my mother and get the full blown body creeps. (love you Mamma, hola!)

Never one to suffer large numbers gladly, Mark Holden immediately breaks the news that because his abacus broke and he counted his toes too many times, they accidentally put a smidgen too many untalented fools through and like kangaroo’s in the outback, there’s a cullin' a comin'. Forty of the least likely to make it through are told to sack up or go home, and I would argue that if they’re that unlikely to make it to the Semi Finals, here’s a revolutionary idea – DON’T SEND THEM TO SYDNEY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
MOTHERFUCKERS.

For real, forty really excited singers who legitimately thought they were in with a chance to soar the dizzying heights of Idol fame, who didn’t sleep for the WEEK before they flew in to Sydney, who told EVERYONE they know that, yes, they made it to the Top 100; didn’t even get to raid their mini bars properly. They now have to go home and tell their parents, their friends, their singing teachers, that no, they weren’t good enough. I imagine that probably stung slightly, don’t you?

Mixing madness in his method, Holden DARED to put HotTrumpeterCarl Risely in this Bottom 40 – but success! He Harry Connick Jr’s much more successfully then he Michael Buble’d – put him through!! They can keep at least four and still have a Top 100!! All ten of the first group get return tickets home; lone Anthony Newcote is the only one from group two; two unnamed lasses from group three and then Kyle Chorus Line’s group four and the people in the front line go home. They all look, understandably, pissed. HotCarl is safe. Phew.

Solo line singing for the rest . . . Daniel Misfud and his bouncy hair don’t sing Green Limousine nearly as well as Chanel, I don’t care how hot Fosse thinks he is. Sarah Lloyde and Sally van der Zwart (that ain’t going to work across an album cover, love) both sound fantastic singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Tennessee Waltz, respectively. All three singers make it through and I comment to Eupholoofo that we’ve already seen more singing in the first twenty mins then we did ALL last season Seymour Centre.

Singer after singer attempts to screech their way through instead of singing and unsurprisingly, that doesn’t so much work. Mark DaCosta rocks the living HELL out of Evie – damn, Idol is determined to make me like this song, isn’t it? Morgan Hosking sings some hauntingly gorgeous melody and if anyone knows what that was, please email me! Jacob Butler is letting his growl out and Euph is not ashamed to report that he has made her knees tremble since his X Factor days. I see it, but do not share it.

Casey Marangon-Elliot’s quite well performed number gets slammed by Kyle and starts an argument about song choice in which the conclusion is; Kyle Knows Jack Shit. We are all astonishment.

Shamara-Lea Hassett does not sing as well or look as comfortable as she did during her sit in audition, she looks like she hungers to have her guitar in her hands and gets herself sent home along with roughly twenty three others as we are left with a grand total of seventy seven – yes, 77 – still to torture.

Mathieson and G stand in the cold Sydney rain as Euph and I launch ourselves at the tv wanting to give them both hugs – G needs a hug! Look he’s cold, vegans have no body fat! I have body fat! Hug me G!! I’m warm blooded!

Holden breaks the apparently awful news that the group songs will be unisex. Yeah? So? And then that they won’t have any help from John Foreman or Erana Clark. Right. Well, now I call bullshit. This fucking process is obviously difficult enough, so why – WHY – take away any shred of decent musical support and give them one of their shit stirring judges? They need impartial help at this point. Not someone who is going to *spoiler* slink around the fucking corridors looking for trouble or who will lurk on the end of a walkie talkie to hear from the camera crews where he can cause the most trouble. BULL. SHIT.

This years group songs are two really quite difficult ones that you should never attempt to harmonise as a newly formed group of nervous singers trying to impress three bitchy judges and the Wigged One; and an obviously really quite smart choice, smarter then the other two to the point where I can’t believe they didn’t have it highlighted in bright pink marker and with some kind of motion sensing device attached to it so that everytime you looked at, it beeped at you and cried in the voice of Stephen Fry, ‘pick me, pick me’ . . .

Straight Lines – silverchair (no, not this one)
Knowing Me, Knowing You – ABBA (nuh-uh, keep going)
End of the Road – Boys II Men (ding ding ding!!)

Supergroup Matt Corby, Rosie Ribbons, Daniel Misfud and Natalie Gauci (may I potentially introduce you to your Final Four?) decide on EotR after Matt comments that Straight Lines is ‘a really hard song’. This will become DEAFENINGLY important very very soon to other people. But not these four. These four are grown up, gorgeous and golden.

Killer Fatigue takes out players all over the damn hotel as Husny Thalib argues with his peroxided groupmate Phil, an argument that just goes on and on, when they should be shutting up and getting the fuck on with it. Dude.

But wait! There’s more and better shit to hit the fan as we quickly move to Northern Territorian Jasmine whose wig has completely flipped - her group of Chad, Dylan and persistent three times this season auditionee Cyndi Dietrich eventually decided to try on Daniel Johns’ falsetto and Jasmine is breaking in pieces right in front of our very eyes as she realises that THEY CAN’T. More specifically? That SHE won’t . . . Holden, in an act of what I can only imagine was pure LUCK, stumbles on to their hotel room and immediately uses his spider senses to hone in on Jasmine’s jacked off visage. He pokes the tiger, saying the group song is to see who can handle pressure and who will crack. Crap. It’s about good tv. It’s about mostly unseasoned and non professional kids staying up all motherfucking night to learn a fucking pop song, trying to work with other non professional kids to harmonise so they don’t sound like cats on heat, then coming in the next day on no sleep, hungry, starving for YOUR approval Holden, dehydrated because they don’t know how to look after themselves and dancing like monkeys for our unadulterated viewing pleasure. The group song NEVER means anything. It barely registers in regards to who you put through to the semi’s. If it did, we would see actual consequences and year after year you put through weaker group performances because they aced their individual auditions. We’re not stupid. Shut up Mark.

Jasmine, who is magnificently backed into a corner by the famous tv star who will later be JUDGING HER strangely looks sullen as Holden berates her and tells her she’s a miserable cow. Awwww, that’s helping, Mark, good work. Yes, she’s being a pain but hey, nonetheless, that’s stellar advice. How she didn’t jump up and just stab him, I don’t know.

HotCarl Risely sleeps with his trumpet. That is strangely, not a euphemism.

Those Lynx BamChicka ads are fucking gold.

More shit goes on. Jasmine says she’s pulling a Jorge Bec and leaving. Then she’s telling her groupmates who basically don’t give a flying fuck because its THREE IN THE MORNING, then lo and behold Holden comes in on his white steed of Mischief to convince her to stay. Even if her voice is shredded. They obviously want this girl in the semi’s. All I’m saying. Because there is no other way on this green earth that her group gets through otherwise. They are bollocks. Cyndi is the only one keeping her shit together in any way, shape or form and is the ONLY one who deserved to get through. The fact that they put all four of them through stinks of shenanigans to me and says Jasmine is in the Top 24. She has a great voice, but she’ll need to keep an eye on the sullen, methinks. She breaks down afterwards – ohhh, lookee, our first real emotional damage of the season. Huzzah! Well done, show.

The silverchair songs proves to be everyone’s downfall – we pause briefly to hate on Tarasai who tries to start a Hillsong convention in the auditorium. HotCarl’s group does not a great job, do (but Monday night previews show him so he makes it through). Then Matt, Rosie, Daniel and Natalie save the day – their End of the Road is pretty effing awesome, right up there with Chris Murphy and Dean Geyer’s Beautiful Day from last season. They communicate very well on stage and you can pick the kids who’ve done this sort of shit before, they have their asses together. Then it’s a cascading waterfall of good group after good group – most of whom have chosen EotR and not Straight Line – Daniel Johns sits at home watching Idol, chuckling evilly to himself and getting more friends addicted to Facebook.

We see lovely individual performances from Lana Krost, Jack Byrnes and Junior To’o and then G & James break it to us that there are sixty four left.
You . . .
Ex . . . cuse . . . me?
The fuck?
We just had seventy seven. We had group perfs and there are STILL SIXTY FOUR? You wankers only ditched THIRTEEN from the group performan . . . . fuck off show. Just fuck right off. I can’t speak to you right now. I’ll see you Monday night as you continue to not show me any Brianna Carpenter.

Bastards.